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In Bob Beauprez, Colorado GOP goes with mainstream contender

Bob Beauprez celebrates winning the Colorado GOP primary election for governor at the Denver Athletic Club with his family and supporters on Tuesday, June 24, 2014. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

Faced with the choice of a far-right candidate or a more moderate mainstream pick, Colorado Republicans chose the latter Tuesday, selecting former Congressman Bob Beauprez as the party's gubernatorial nominee.

The dairy farmer-turned-banker-turned-buffalo rancher got into the GOP contest late as Republicans worried they didn't have a viable candidate to defeat Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper in November.

Now the party believes it has a fighting chance of unseating an incumbent whose popularity has teeter-tottered much of the past year.

Beauprez bested three rivals in the primary. Returns showed former Congressman Tom Tancredo, an immigration firebrand who some believed had strong chance of victory, trailed in second place, while Secretary of State Scott Gessler and former state Sen. Mike Kopp were in third and fourth, respectively.

"Certainly Beauprez is the underdog against John Hickenlooper, who has raised money and has the power of incumbency. But for Republican strategists both locally and nationally, they'll probably sleep a little easier headed into November with him on the ballot and not Tancredo," said Nathan L. Gonzales, deputy editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

Republicans haven't won a U.S. Senate or gubernatorial race in Colorado since 2002, and now the party sets its sights on a Beauprez victory while banking on Congressman Cory Gardner unseating incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall in one of the most competitive top-ticket races in the country.

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"This is a clear expression that the party wants to win in November and take the fight to Hickenlooper. (Beauprez) is a candidate all Republicans can rally around in November," said Dick Wadhams, former Republican party chairman.

As polls closed Tuesday, Republicans also kept close tabs on a handful of competitive contests outside of the gubernatorial race, chief among them a pair of state Senate races in the centrist Jefferson County. Two hard-right Republicans, Laura Woods and Tony Sanchez, beat more moderate challengers, leading to the question of how they will fare in November when unaffiliated voters play a large role in selecting candidates. At stake is Democrats' single-seat majority in the state Senate.

Mainstream Republicans leading up to the primary voiced concern about Tancredo's candidacy for governor, saying his immigration remarks and off-the-cuff comments would hurt the party up and down the ticket this fall.

One Republican poll, done as party insiders were trying to talk Tancredo into dropping out of the race, showed him leading Beauprez by 10 percentage points.

But Beauprez loaned his campaign $527,000, while outside money paid for ads to designed to bolster his candidacy at the expense of Tancredo's.

Hickenlooper has taken flak for his comments this month when he spoke to Colorado sheriffs and appeared to back off his support for a controversial ban of high-capacity ammunition magazines he signed into law in 2013, although he later said even now he'd sign the bill.

Democrats, offering cover to Hickenlooper, took aim at Beauprez on Tuesday as returns showed he would come out victorious.

"When it comes to family planning, Beauprez said he would sign a bill that would ban abortion without exceptions for victims of rape and incest and continue the extreme Republican agenda of limiting access to birth control," Palacio said. "His positions put him in the far right of the Republican Party and way out of Colorado's mainstream."

Peter Hanson, a professor of political science at the University of Denver, said Beauprez has a "tough task" ahead of him.

"But for Republicans, they're making a point by selecting the more moderate of the perceived front-runners. And that's a positive message for a party in a very middle-of-the-road state. Beauprez, although he still has a voting record, he's much tougher to paint as extreme than compared to Tancredo," Hanson said.

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